Call him a Muffler man, corruption hunter or aam aadmi, but Arvind Kejriwal and team are not to be under estimated. None of the exit polls were anticipating such a victory for AAP. BJP fell flat of 3 seats and congress got decimated. Similar to Modi wave, its AAP's Tsunami as some people are saying.
I am writing this post to analyze the results and what went positive for AAM aadmi.
1. Door to door campaigning.
While BJP did high level stuff like asking cabinet ministers, calling Obama on republic day parade, calling film actors to campaign on behalf of Kiran Bedi in Delhi, AAP kept the campaigning to grass root level of going door to door, conducting Mohalla sabhas etc and trying to woe the Delhi voters. They apologized in public several times for last year's debacle and assured people that if they get a clear mandate they will prove to them that they are an asset.
2. Nature of campaigning
BJP and congress campaigned in their old fashioned way of accusing other party and negative politics against AAP. AAP stuck to the positive campaign and have struck the cord with the voters of Delhi. This kind of mandate asserts that politics is changing in India and people want a fresh party who can understand their common day to day problems. The high political drama of calling president to republic parade etc has not helped BJP much in their campaign. They gave ads in local newspaper targetting Arvind Kejriwal and spent too much time criticizing him.
3. Inducting Kiran Bedi, Shazia Ilmi and Vinod Binny
The biggest blunder BJP committed is by inducting CM candidate 20days before elections. They should have added her 2 months before elections. Kiran Bedi no doubt has a good track record and she is the only one who can face Kejriwal in terms of clean image and good record. She couldn't take part in many debates and answer to questions asked specifically for BJP strategies. It almost looked like she is alone and BJP is not with her. How can a CM candidate take up Delhi when her ministers are not going to obey her. People mostly felt that she is opportunist and trying to ride on the Modi Wave factor. However, for other two candidates they had already left AAP due to personal reasons. So, they wouldn't have added much to this debacle.
4. Gaining voters confidence
I think the important task that AAP did was to gain back the voters confidence. For this they did their homework since last year after they failed miserably in the Lok sabha elections. Hats off to them for pulling this effort. BJP was showing Modi as the face of this campaign but people know that he is a PM and he is not going to govern Delhi. They should have campaigned vigorously with Kiran Bedi as she could have connected more with the voters of Delhi. All the BJP Ads focussed only on Modi and Amit Shah.
Now, AAP has to succeed in their 5yrs term since they have a overwhelming mandate to serve the people of Delhi.
